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The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) è un lungo reportage di giornalismo narrativo che Orwell, fra gli antesignani del genere, dedica alle condizioni di vita e work del proletariato inglese, osservate prendendo coscienza, via via, della sua stessa classe di appartenenza: quella borghese. In questo secondo capitolo si sofferma sulla realtà della miniera di carbone. La traduzione è a cura di Anna Martini.
Our civilisation, with good Pace In Chesterton, it is founded on coal, more completely than one might realise until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that build other machines, all depend, directly or indirectly, on coal. In the metabolism of the Western world, the miner is second only in importance to the man who ploughs the soil. He is a kind of grimy Atlas holding up everything that is not grimy. For this reason, it is well worth observing the concrete process of coal extraction, if you happen to have the opportunity and are willing to take the trouble.
When descending into a mine, it is important to try and reach the coal face when the “fillers” are at work. It is not easy, as the presence of visitors when the mine is active is a nuisance and is discouraged; but if one visits it at any other time, one can get quite the wrong impression. On a Sunday, for instance, the mine seems almost a peaceful place. The right time to go is instead when the machines are roaring and the air is black with coal dust, and one really sees what the miners have to do. Then it is hell, at least as I imagine it. You find almost all the things that one imagines in hell: heat, noise, confusion, darkness, foul air, and above all an unendurable cramped space. All except fire, because there is no fire down here save the faint beams from the Davy lamps and electric torches that can barely penetrate the clouds of dust.
Quando infine ci arrivi – e arrivarci è un lavoro di per sé; lo spiegherò tra un attimo –, strisci oltre l’ultima fila di puntelli e ti trovi davanti a una parete nera e lucida alta tre o quattro piedi. È la fronte del carbone. In alto c’è il liscio soffitto composto dalla roccia da cui il carbone è stato estratto; in basso, ancora roccia, sicché la galleria in cui ti trovi non è più alta della vena di carbone: non supera di molto una iarda, probabilmente. La prima impressione generale, che per un poco eclissa tutto il resto, è il fracasso spaventoso, assordante del nastro trasportatore che porta via il carbone. Non si riesce a vedere molto lontano: la nebbia di polvere riflette il fascio di luce della lampada, ma si scorge su entrambi i lati la fila di uomini in ginocchio, mezzi nudi, uno ogni quattro o cinque iarde, a spingere la pala sotto il carbone caduto e gettarlo in fretta dietro la spalla sinistra. Lo danno in pasto al nastro trasportatore, un tappeto di gomma semovente largo un paio di piedi, che scorre una iarda o due dietro di loro. Lungo il nastro, un fiume luccicante di carbone fluisce senza posa. Nelle Mine più grandi, trasporta diverse tonnellate di carbone al minuto; questo arriva in qualche punto delle gallerie principali, dove è convogliato in vagonetti con capienza di mezza tonnellata, quindi trascinato fino alle gabbie e issato all’aria aperta.
It is impossible to watch the “fillers” at work without feeling a pang of envy at their sturdiness. Theirs is a gruelling job, almost superhuman by the standards of an ordinary person. Not only do they move monstrous quantities of coal, but they do so in a position that doubles or triples the effort. They have to remain on their knees the whole time – they couldn’t stand up without banging their heads against the ceiling – and you only have to try it to realise what a terrible strain it is. Shovelling is relatively easy when standing, because you can use your knee and thigh to help push the shovel; if you’re on your knees, the entire load rests on the muscles of your arms and abdomen. Then, the other aspects of the situation don’t make things any easier. There’s the heat – not always the same, but in certain mines it’s stifling – and the coal dust that clogs your throat and nostrils and settles on your eyelashes, and the incessant roar of the conveyor belt, which in that cramped space sounds like the crackle of a machine gun. But the loaders, watching them work, seem to be made of iron. Seriously: wrought-iron statues, beneath the smooth patina of black dust that coats them from head to toe. Only by seeing the miners in the mine, stripped bare, can you realise just how magnificent they are. They are mostly of small stature (large men are at a disadvantage in this line of work) but almost all have most noble physiques: broad shoulders and a narrow, supple waist, small, well-defined buttocks and sinewy thighs, without an ounce of excess flesh. In the warmer mines they wear only a pair of light underpants, clogs and knee pads; in the scorching mines, just the clogs and knee pads. Looking at them, it is impossible to tell whether they are young or old. They may be as old as sixty or even sixty-five, but when they are black and naked, they all look the same. No one could do their job without having the body of a young man and the build of a Royal Guard; a few extra pounds around the waist would make the constant bending impossible. It is a sight that, once seen, is never forgotten: the line of stooping, kneeling figures, all black with soot, shovelling the large shovels beneath the coal with astonishing strength and speed. They work for seven and a half hours, in theory without interruption, as there are no breaks. In reality, at some point during their shift they snatch a quarter of an hour to eat the meal they have brought with them, usually a large slice of bread with roast drippings and a bottle of iced tea. The first time I saw the “fillers” at work, I put my hand on something horribly slimy amidst the coal dust. It was a lump of chewed tobacco. Almost all the miners chew tobacco; they say it helps to stave off thirst.
Penso che occorra scendere in diverse miniere prima di chiarirsi le idee sulle operazioni che ti si svolgono intorno. Più che altro, perché la semplice fatica di andare da un posto all’altro rende complicato notare qualunque altra cosa. Per certi versi è perfino deludente, o almeno diverso da come te l’aspettavi. Entri nella gabbia, una cassa d’steel larga più o meno come una cabina telefonica e lunga il doppio o il triplo. Può portare dieci uomini, ma stipati come sardine in una lattina, e un uomo alto non può starci diritto. Lo sportello d’acciaio si chiude sopra di te e la persona che manovra il verricello in alto ti cala giù nel vuoto. Un attimo di nausea e una specie di esplosione nelle orecchie, ma non fai molto caso al movimento finché non sei quasi al fondo, quando la gabbia rallenta così bruscamente che giureresti stia tornando a risalire. Durante la corsa, la gabbia tocca probabilmente le sessanta miglia all’ora; anche di più, in alcune miniere più profonde. Arrivato al fondo, quando strisci fuori, ti trovi più o meno a quattrocento iarde sotto terra. Vale a dire che hai sopra la testa una discreta montagna; centinaia di iarde di roccia compatta, ossa di bestie estinte, substrato inerte, selci, radici di cose vive, erba verde e vacche che ci pascolano – tutto ciò, sospeso sulla tua testa e sorretto unicamente da puntelli di legno spessi come il tuo polpaccio. Ma data la velocità con cui la gabbia ti ha fatto scendere, e il nero assoluto che hai traversato, ti pare d’essere non più giù che alfondo della metropolitana di Piccadilly.
What is truly astonishing, however, are the immense horizontal distances that have to be covered underground. Before going down a mine, I vaguely imagined the miner getting out of the cage and starting to work on a coal seam a few yards away. I didn't realise that before starting to work, he might have to crawl through tunnels as long as from London Bridge to Oxford Circus. Of course, at first, the mine shaft is dug near a seam of coal. But once that seam is exhausted, they follow new ones, and the operation moves further and further away from the bottom of the shaft. A mile from the shaft to the coal face is an average distance, three miles is normal; it seems that in some mines they reach five miles. But these are distances that have nothing to do with those on the surface. Because for that whole mile, or those three miles, there is only the main tunnel where one can stand upright, and even there it's not always possible.
Dopo qualche centinaio di iarde, ti accorgi dell’effetto. Ti chini leggermente e imbocchi la galleria semibuia, larga otto o dieci piedi e alta circa cinque, con le pareti rinforzate da lastre di scisto, come i muri in pietra del Derbyshire. Ogni paio di iarde ci sono puntelli di legno che reggono travi e putrelle; alcune putrelle si sono deformate creando fantastiche curve, sotto le quali ti devi abbassare. Di solito il terreno è pessimo: polvere densa o schegge puntute di scisto, e in certe miniere, dove c’è acqua, è fangoso come in un’aia. Poi c’è il binario dei vagonetti del carbone, una specie di ferrovia in miniatura con le traversine distanziate di un piede o due, dove è faticoso camminare. Tutto è grigio di polvere di scisto; c’è un acre odore polveroso che sembra uguale in tutte le miniere. Vedi macchinari misteriosi di cui non capirai mai lo scopo, e attrezzi affastellati col filo di ferro, e a volte topi che schizzano via dai fasci di luce delle lampade. Non sono affatto rari, specie nelle miniere dove ci sono o ci sono stati dei cavalli. Sarebbe interessante sapere come ci siano arrivati; forse cadendo giù per il pozzo: si dice che un topo può cadere da qualsiasi altezza senza farsi male, dato che ha una superficie molto ampia in rapporto al peso. Ti schiacci contro la parete per fare spazio alle file di vagonetti che vanno sballottando verso il pozzo, trainati da un infinito cavo d’acciaio azionato dalla superficie. Strisci attraverso tende di tela da sacchi e sportelli di legno spessi che, quando si aprono, fanno passare violente raffiche d’aria. Questi sportelli sono una parte importante del sistema di ventilazione. L’aria esausta viene risucchiata fuori da un pozzo tramite ventilatori, e l’aria fresca entra da sé nell’altro pozzo. Ma se la si lasciasse fare, l’aria prenderebbe la via più breve, e le zone di lavoro più profonde resterebbero prive di ventilazione; perciò tutte le scorciatoie devono essere chiuse con paratie.
At first, walking stooped over seems a bit of a laugh, but you soon lose the taste for it. I’m at a disadvantage with my uncommon height, but when the ceiling isn’t more than four feet high it becomes tough for anyone who isn’t a dwarf or a child. Not only must you bend double, but you must also keep your head constantly up, to see beams and girders and duck them at the right moment. So you suffer from a perpetual stiff neck, which, however, is nothing compared to the pain in your knees and thighs. After half a mile it becomes (I’m not exaggerating) an unbearable agony. You begin to wonder if you’ll ever reach the end – and even more, you wonder how on earth you’ll get back. Your pace slows more and more. You reach a section of about two hundred yards that’s exceptionally low, and you have to find the strength to proceed squatting. Then suddenly the ceiling opens up to a mysterious height: an old rockfall, probably; and you can stand upright for a good twenty yards. An overwhelming relief. But then come another hundred low yards and then a series of beams under which you have to crawl. You get down on all fours, and this too is a relief, after so much squatting. But when you reach the end of the beams and try to stand up again, you discover that your knees have temporarily gone into strike and they refuse to support you. You make a stop, with great shame, and say you'd like to rest for a couple of minutes. Your guide (a miner) is understanding. He knows your muscles aren't like his. «Another four hundred yards, just,» he says encouragingly; to you, it's as if he'd said another four hundred miles. But eventually, one way or another, you manage to drag yourself to the coal face. You've travelled a mile in nearly an hour; a miner would take just over twenty minutes. Having arrived there, you can only throw yourself into the coal dust and regain your strength for several minutes, before you're even able to observe the work in progress with any clarity.
The return journey is worse than the outward one, not only because you’re already exhausted but also because the path back to the mine shaft will probably be slightly uphill. You trudge along the flatter sections at a snail’s pace, and when your knees give way, you ask to stop, without a shred of embarrassment. Even the lamp you’re holding becomes a nuisance and perhaps, when you stumble, it falls out of your hand; consequently, if it’s a Davy lamp, it goes out. Crouching under the beams becomes an ever-greater struggle, and sometimes you forget to do so. You try to walk with your head down like the miners do and bump your back. Even the miners bump their backs quite often. That’s why in the hottest mines, where you have to work half-naked, almost all miners have what they call “back buttons” – a permanent callus on each vertebra. When the track goes downhill, miners sometimes hook their clogs – which have straps under the soles – onto the rails of the trolleys and let themselves slide down. In mines where the “journey” is tougher, all miners have sticks about two and a half feet long, hollowed out inside beneath the handle. On level sections, they rest their hand on top of the stick, and on steep sections they slip it into the hollow. These sticks are a great help, and the wooden helmets — a relatively recent invention — are a godsend. They look like French or Italian steel helmets, but are made of a kind of pith and are extremely light, yet so sturdy that you can take a violent blow to the head without feeling a thing. When you finally return to the surface, you’ve been underground for perhaps three hours and have covered two miles, and you’re more exhausted than after a twenty-five-mile walk in the open air. For a week your thighs will be so stiff that going down the stairs will be no mean feat; you’ll go down in a strange, lopsided way, without bending your knees. Your miner friends see you walking stiffly and tease you. («So, not too bad working down there, eh?», and so on.) But even a miner who’s been out of work for a long time – due to illness, for example – struggles quite a bit during his first few days back in the pit.
It may sound like I'm exaggerating, but anyone who has descended into an old well (as almost all of them are, in Englandand had actually reached the coal face would be able to state it. But what I would like to stress is this: the dreadful business of crawling forwards and backwards, which for an ordinary person is in itself a hard day's work; and it is not at all part of the miner's job, it is a surplus, like commuting to the City every day by tube. The miner does those journeys back and forth, and between them there are seven and a half hours of brutal work. I never had to go much more than a mile to reach the coal face; but often it is three miles, and in those cases I, and practically anyone who is not a miner, would never get there. This is the point that always tends to escape us. When we think of a mine, we think of the depth, the heat, the darkness, the blackened figures striking at walls of coal; we do not necessarily think of all those miles to be crawled back and forth. And there is also the question of time. The miner's shift, seven and a half hours, would not seem very long, but you have to add at least an hour a day for “travelling”, more often two hours, sometimes three. Of course, “travelling” is not technically work, and the miner is not paid for it; but it resembles work so much that it makes no difference. It is easy to say that miners do not notice it. Of course, for them it is not like it would be for you or me. They have been doing it since’childhood, They have strengthened the right muscles and can move forwards and backwards underground with surprising, almost frightening agility. A miner lowers his head and walks through running, with a long, rolling stride, places where I can only stagger. In the tunnels, you see them scuttling on all fours around the props almost like dogs. But it would be a big mistake to think they enjoy it. I've spoken to dozens of miners and they all admit that the “journey” is tough; in any case, when you hear them talking amongst themselves about a mine, the “journey” is always a topic of discussion. It's said that a shift always goes faster coming out than getting to work; nonetheless, the miners all agree that it's the return, after a hard day in the mine, that is particularly onerous. It's part of their job and they're up to the task, but it's undoubtedly tiring. Perhaps it can be compared to having to climb a small mountain before and after the workday.
After descending into two or three shafts, one begins to get a sense of what goes on underground (incidentally, I must admit that I have not the slightest understanding of the technical aspects of mining; I shall confine myself to describing what I have observed). The coal lies in thin seams between very thick layers of rock; so, essentially, extracting it is like scooping out the middle layer of a Neapolitan ice cream. In the past, miners used to cut directly into the coal with a pickaxe and crowbar — an extremely slow process, as coal, when in its natural state, is almost as hard as rock. Today, the preliminary work is carried out by an electric cutter, which operates on the principle of an extremely sturdy and powerful band saw, working horizontally rather than vertically, with teeth a couple of inches long and half an inch or an inch thick. It moves forwards or backwards of its own accord, and the men operating it can steer it in any direction they choose. Incidentally, it produces one of the most deafening noises I have ever heard and spews out clouds of black dust that make it impossible to see more than two or three feet ahead and almost impossible to breathe. The machine advances along the working face, cutting into the base of the coal seam and undercutting it to a depth of five feet, five and a half feet; after that, it is relatively easy to extract the coal down to the depth to which it has been undercut. Where extraction proves difficult, however, the coal must also be loosened with the aid of explosives. A man with an electric drill, similar in size to those used for roadworks, drills holes into the coal at intervals, inserts powdered explosive into them, seals the holes with clay, takes cover behind a corner if there is one (in fact, he should move twenty-five yards away) and detonates the charge with an electric current. This does not serve to extract the coal, but merely to break it up. Of course, every now and then the charge is too powerful, and then it brings down not only the coal but also the ceiling.
After the explosion, the “fillers” can extract the coal by rolling it, then break it up and shovel it onto the conveyor belt. The former are monstrous boulders that can weigh up to twenty tonnes. The belt shoots them onto the wagons, which are pushed into the main tunnel and hooked onto a continuously rotating steel cable that drags them to the cage. They are then lifted and, on the surface, the coal is separated by passing it over screens and, if necessary, it is also washed. As far as possible, the waste material, called “spoil” - i.e. shale - is used to build the underground roads. Anything that cannot be used is brought to the surface and dumped; hence the enormous mounds of material, the grim grey mountains that are a common sight in coal-mining regions. When the coal has been extracted to the depth reached by the machine, the cutting face has advanced five feet. New props are put in to support the newly exposed roof and, in the next shift, the conveyor belt is dismantled, moved forward five feet and reassembled. As far as possible, the three operations of cutting, blasting and filling take place in three separate shifts: cutting in the afternoon, blasting in the evening (there is a law, not always respected, which prohibits it in the presence of other men working nearby), and “filling” in the morning shift, which lasts from six to half past one.
Anche quando osservi il process di estrazione del carbone, probabilmente lo fai per un tempo breve, e soltanto quando cominci a fare un po’ di calcoli ti rendi conto di quanto sia enorme il lavoro dei “riempitori”. Di norma, ciascuno di loro deve sgomberare uno spazio largo quattro o cinque iarde. La tagliatrice ha scalzato il carbone fino a una profondità di cinque piedi, per cui, se il filone è alto tre o quattro piedi, ogni uomo deve staccare, spezzare e caricare sul nastro una quantità di carbone compresa fra sette e dodici iardecubiche di carbone. Vale a dire — assumendo che una iarda cubica pesi ventisette hundredweight— that every man shifts coal at a rate approaching two tons an hour. With the little experience I have had of pick and shovel, I can guess what that means. When I dig trenches in my garden, if I shift two tons of earth in an afternoon, I feel that I have earned my tea. But earth is a docile material compared with coal, and I do not have to work on my knees an inch below the surface, nor in a stifling heat and swallowing black dust with every breath; nor do I have to walk a mile bent double before beginning. The miner’s job would be as far beyond my powers as climbing the Matterhorn or becoming a ballet-dancer. I am not a labourer, and, thank God, I never shall be; but there are labourers and labourers. Some men are physically powerful, and such men would take to the job as a duck to water. Others are not built for it, and I am not built for it. The work would kill me in a few weeks.
Observing the miners at work, there's a moment when you realise that different people live in different universes. Down where the coal is extracted is a sort of world apart, and one can quite easily go through life without ever knowing anything about it. Indeed, it's probable that most people would prefer not to know anything about it. Yet it is the indispensable counterpoint to our world above. Practically everything we do, from eating an ice cream to crossing the Atlantic, and from baking a loaf of bread to writing a novel, directly or indirectly involves the use of coal. For all the arts of peace, coal is needed; even more so if war breaks out. In time of revolution, the miner must continue to work, otherwise the revolution will have to stop, because both revolution and reaction need coal. Whatever happens on the surface, pickaxes and shovels must keep going without stopping, or at least without stopping for more than a few weeks. For Hitler to goose-step, for the Pope to denounce the Bolshevism, So that crowds may gather at Lord's Cricket Ground, so that drawing-room poets may stroke each other's fur, there must be coal. But we are not generally aware of it; we all know that “coal is needed,” but we seldom, if ever, remember what procuring it entails. Here I am, sitting writing before my comfortable coal fire. It is April, yet I still need the fire. Every fortnight the cart stops at the door, and men in sleeveless leather jackets bring the coal into the house in stout, tarry-smelling sacks, and bang it noisily into the bin under the stairs. Only very rarely, by a definite mental effort, do I connect this coal with that remote labour in the mines. It is only “coal”: something that I have to have; a black substance that mysteriously arrives from nowhere in particular, like manna, only one has to pay for it. You could quite easily motor all over the North of England without once remembering that, hundreds of feet below the road on which you are travelling, miners are pickaxing coal. Yet in a sense it is those miners who make your motor-car go. Their world down there, lit by lamps, is as necessary to the world up here, bathed in daylight, as the root is to the flower.
It was not so long ago that conditions in the mines were worse than they are today. There are still a few very old women alive who, in their youth, worked underground with a harness round their waists and a chain passing between their legs, crawling on all fours and dragging coal wagons. And usually they did so even when pregnant. And even today, if coal could not be got out without pregnant women being forced to drag it to and fro, I imagine we should let them do it, rather than do without coal. But for the most part, of course, we would rather forget that they do it. And this is true of all manual labour: it keeps us alive, and we pretend that it does not exist. More than anyone else, perhaps, the miner can represent the type of manual worker, not only because his labour is so outrageously terrible, but also because it is so vitally necessary and yet so detached from our experience, so invisible, as it were, that we are able to forget it as we forget the blood that flows in our veins. In a way, it is even humbling to watch the miners at work. For a moment it makes you doubt your own status as an “intellectual” and, more generally, as a superior person. For it forces you to recognise—while you are watching, at least—that it is only because miners break their backs that superior persons can remain superior. You, I, the manager of the Times Literary Supplement, the parlour poets, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxismo spiegato ai children, We all truly owe the relative respectability of our lives to poor people toiling underground, black as the ace of spades, their throats full of coal dust, who push forward the shovel with steel-like arms and bellies.